Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Also True

The night after I wrote my last stormy post, Asher climbed into bed, in the mid-dark of the night, cuddled up as close as he possibly could, wrapped his arm around my neck, said, 'Hi Mommy. Mommy, hi.' in the incredibly sweet, sleepy way he has of saying it that makes my heart get all warm and melty soft, and fell asleep. In the morning he gave me a good, long hug as if to say, 'I was mad at you last night, and I know you were mad at me. But we're okay.'

My heart rebuked me. How could I have been in such a dark place last night?! Look at the joy I have at my fingertips! Look at this amazing life!

Today I was driving around with Damek and he turned the cd player on. Adam had popped in an old cd he had found, something I loved. A song came on I hadn't even remembered existed and it just hit so hard. It's called Family Man, by Andrew Peterson. If you want to listen to the whole thing, you can find it here . It's all about how becoming a family man is so different than the life he had thought he wanted. And how beautiful the differences are. One stanza I needed to listen to over and over. It says:

And everything I had to lose,
Came back a thousand times in you
You fill me up with love
Fill me up with love
And you help me stand
'Cause I am a family man

Gah! It's so true! That selfish girl inside me I've always battled with, she likes to rear her head sometimes. But the fact is, my life is so much richer because of all I've had to let go. And I have to tell her:

This was not my plan
It's so much better than

Tonight I took Asher to small group again. I didn't want to. I remembered how hard last week was and I remembered all the mistakes I made and how impatient and tired I was and how tired I was this week and I thought, 'Let's just not go there again.' But Asher looked at me with big tears welling up in his eyes after Adam and the big boys left. And he said to me, with his voice trembling, 'Go church? Go church, see Daddy?' And I knew, deep inside, that the reason I didn't want to go was because of my own stuff, not because it would be best for Asher, so I said, 'Sure, Buddy. We'll go to church.'

He was so happy he could not stop dancing for the first 10 minutes of getting there. He only lasted a few minutes into the kids' worship talk, he's been in school all day after all, but he wanted to stay. So, we went to the younger kids' room early and he happily colored until everyone else got there. The younger kids have a married couple who run their activities after the worship thought. Asher adopted the husband, sat right next to him, talked to him, showed him his artwork, and was happy as a clam. I stepped outside but hung around in case he got too tired to be a part of the program anymore but the one time I stepped in to check on him, he told me to 'Go Mommy!' and the leaders told me they loved him so much they were going to bring him home. I felt myself relaxing for the first time all night.

On the way home I was listening to an interview with a comedian I really like and she was talking about how her life has changed since getting married and having kids.

"I heard all these people talking about how making a commitment is so difficult because there are so many things you have to give up in order to get married. But that's really confusing to me because I have found that since getting married and having my kids, I have so much more than I had before. I feel like I have made it and that there is opportunity for even more, and I'm not talking about my career."

Bam! That's it!

The truth is that times of darkness will come on me and you, and we can express it but we don't have to hold onto it. And we can find the light again and we can realize what a gift we have been given.


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